Every year, GivingUSA releases a comprehensive report covering the philanthropic trends of the previous year. Studying these shifts allows Benevolent Vision to help our foundation and nonprofit clients adapt their giving and fundraising models accordingly. Here are the important things you need to know about how giving to the Health Sector has shifted since the start of the pandemic:
Top 7 Trends
Health Gifts Declined: Giving to health declined by 4.2%, adjusted for inflation.
Lower Participation in person peer-to-peer programs: The pandemic nearly wiped out all peer-to-peer programming revenue.
Average Donation from Individuals Increased: The average amount given by each individual donor increased.
Health was #6: Health ranked sixth largest sector for total gifts received, after public-society benefit organizations, grantmaking foundations, human service organizations, education, and topping the list, religious organizations.
Online Giving Increased: According to the Blackbaud Institute, gifts contributed through online portals to healthcare increased by 11.7% between 2019 and 2020.
Mega Foundations Funded Covid-19 Emergency Relief: Big foundations such as Rockefeller and Gates focused funding on pandemic-related emergency relief, much of which may not have fallen into traditional Health categories. Some of these gifts were used to support testing and PPE for vulnerable communities, while other gifts went to vaccine research and were classified as gifts to the Education Sector.
Medical Research Gifts Declined: Medical research overall experienced a decline during the pandemic.
The most significant take-away from the GivingUSA report is that the urgent issue of the pandemic tanked peer-to-peer programs and drove up giving to specific pandemic-related causes, such as funding for vaccine research. The rise in these donations led to the subsequent decline in giving to traditional medical research. Because funds for vaccine research are often classified as gifts to the Education Sector, overall giving to the Health Sector declined in 2020. This decline was furthered by the loss of revenue from in-person fundraising events, such as walks and runs.
2 Actionable Takeaways
Giving increases when causes are perceived as both intersectional and urgent.
Nonprofits should focus on attracting grantors and donors by specifying issues in context of current events, and emphasizing the urgency of the issue at hand. For example, the pandemic played a big role in illuminating the reality of the disproportionate accessibility of healthcare services in minority communities versus predominantly white communities. In 2020, we saw this in action with the dramatic increase in giving to the Public-society Benefit (Civil Liberties) Sector with an annual increase of 14.3% to $48 billion (GivingUSA).
Utilize the media spotlight on current issues to help raise funds. Mental health, for example, is currently receiving a great deal of media attention--this should be leveraged to raise awareness and contribute to a sense of urgency around this issue through a fundraising lens.
Give your online strategies a facelift.
If you lead or support a nonprofit that relies heavily on peer-to-peer programs, it may be time to adopt new virtual strategies. This pandemic and the corresponding increase in online giving have shown that in-person methods of engagement are not sustainable on their own. On the bright side, this transition is the perfect opportunity to get creative and surprise your network with an upgrade! Some ideas for nonprofits to adopt include crowdfunding, text-to-give donations, hybrid auctions, and social media campaigns.